


Like Fire In The Forge

by RoryKurago



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Complete, Explicit Sexual Content, Exploration, F/F, First Crush, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:09:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4732358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daja notices a Fire Temple novice with flaming red hair across the yard as they ferry wounded inside after the pirate attack, and the two girls share wan smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gauze

**Author's Note:**

> Spans just after the pirate attack to after Will Of The Empress. Written to cross-off some more prompts, and because Daja both is love and needs more love.
> 
> Unbeta'd, though if you have feedback I'd love to hear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 10: Gauze

Daja’s magic was no help to her in the chaos that followed the pirate attack. Under the weight of that helplessness she found even her composure cracking. So while Sandry and Lark worked at the looms, and Briar helped Rosethorn in her workshop, Daja laboured with the other stretcher-bearers carrying casualties to the Water Temple infirmaries. They worked wearily through the night while the injured moaned, groaned, and died when help came too late. Daja empathised with the white- and green-faced novices at the other end of the stretchers. Her own stomach roiled but she kept it in place.

The sun dripped red over the sea as she returned to the training school courtyard, as if it too had been struck a grievous blow. It flowed into the temple through the ruined wall, creeping up like the tide with the dawning sun. Red filled the yard like a wash of blood.

As if there wasn’t enough of that around already, Daja thought grimly.

In the shade of a column she bent to help a man in the yellow habit of an Air Temple Dedicate lift a novice onto a stretcher. The novice yelped when Daja brushed a soggy patch on his leg. White bone jutted through the cloth like a javelin point. Daja’s eyes jumped up and away as she mouthed an apology, looking anywhere else.

Across the courtyard another novice checked the pulse of a man in patched leathers, and then wiped blood from his mouth. Beyond his reach (kicked clear) a sword glinted red in the grass. Binding the novice’s waist was a cord the same colour.

Fire temple, Daja thought wearily. Another re-purposed defender. In her hand, the novice held a wad of bloody gauze and an open bottle of unguent. The contents of the bottle glinted an insipid gold to Daja’s sight.

The novice – a girl about Daja’s age with a thick braid falling forward almost onto the pirate’s chest – looked up at the same time the _Tsaw-ha_ did.

Early sunlight soaked the novice’s braid in a red so profound she might have been using it to mop blood from the fallen instead of the wadded bandage. For a moment, she looked as tired as Daja felt: both of them streaked with sweat and grime. They shared a wan smile across the yard still strewn with fallen friends and foe, then bent back to their tasks.

 


	2. Drawing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 46: Drawing

Daja was alone in the forge. Since their return from the northern provinces, Frostpine had been unceasingly in demand as all the work that had accumulated in his absence suddenly had to ‘absolutely be done _at once_ ’. Daja didn’t mind. It meant she had the forge to herself. She could practice with her new toys—the fire square and the living brass that coated her palm.

Which she could be doing right now, she thought dourly, if it weren’t for Frostpine’s insistence that she take a break from them. Instead, she’d obediently picked through the list of projects on hold until she ran across one that caught her eye.

Frostpine had noted that the next few months would involve a lot of fine work for Winding Circle itself. Fine work for which the resources would have to be prepared ahead of time. Gold wire, for instance, was critically understocked. The idea of spending an afternoon working with one of her favourite metals tickled a part of Daja desperately in need of attention. She missed gold. She missed its simplicity, and eagerness. The feel of its pulse as she drew it into shape.

Settling into the steady rhythm of drawing was like falling into a feather bed. For two hours she’d worked steadily, undisturbed. Sweat beaded on her skin. The band she wore around her forehead grew damp. The world greyed out, narrowing to discreet points:

The swoop of the forge flames. The slow beat of her breathing. The pinprick hole in the drawing plate as gold flowed out to follow her.

Peace. At last.

But now voices pricked at her consciousness. Holding on to her meditative restfulness, she drew the last of the gold through the hole. With it safely drawn, Daja allowed herself a glance out the door. The wire hissed as she dumped it in water and processed what she’d seen. Two novices crunching down the gravel path towards the forge; one with the red-belted white of Fire Temple; the other, Earth Temple green. They shared the same face and hair.

Listening, Daja rubbed beeswax over an earlier coil of wire with her back to the door. Further words were exchanged. One girl laughed. A drift of breeze carried the scents of lemongrass and burning sage into the forge, where they mixed uneasily with those of smoke and hot metal.

Gravel crunched as one set of feet moved away. The lemongrass faded. The sage didn’t.

If nothing else, Daja couldn’t appear rude. Frostpine might be a mighty enough mage to snub fusty Dedicates and their runners, but although Daja’s name was growing (she’d heard no less than three versions of the tale of the Wildfire and the Trader Mage by the time they arrived back in Summersea) she wasn’t so lofty yet as to turn away customers. Whatever she might think, the visit likely meant work.

With a sigh, she turned to greet the interloper.

At closer range, she realised she knew the face in the verge between daylight and the gloom of the forge. She frowned at the novice and flipped through the pages of her memory. (‘Pages’; that was Tris.) Familiarity tugged at her.

Thick hair coiled around itself at the base of the girl’s neck in a simplified version of city fashion. Allowing for that to be a braid…

As she stared at the other girl, it crossed Daja’s mind that she’d been mistaken that morning after the pirates: what she’d taken for a trick of the light was in fact natural. The girl had hair like Tris, redder than copper. Red as fire in the forge.

Suddenly uncomfortable, Daja began to strip off her heavy mitts. She wasn’t so skilled at masking her social discomfort as Sandry was with her Lady-face.

The novice’s pale eyes crinkled. “You remember me. I am Alina.” Up close, she didn’t look so fair: more windburnt and chapped. One corner of her lip was reddened as if she’d been worrying at it. The small, hard hand she extended had dirt firmly lodged under the nails.

“Daja.” As they shook hands, the _Tsaw’ha_ found calluses of staff-work and manual labour to match her own, and skin warmer than expected. She put the sudden thump of her heart down to the heat of the day combining with the heat of the forge and flashed her teeth in a grin when Alina said,

“It’s nice to exchange names at last.”


	3. Cherries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 9: Cherries (changed from 'Sakura')

It was hard to focus on her staff-work these days. As Midwinter drew nearer, Daja had taken to joining the Fire Temple novices for their early morning drills. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t to see Lina. Yet every time she caught a glint of the novice’s bold smile across the yard, Daja’s heart seemed to beat twice as fast and her face heated up like rod iron in the fire. It was beyond perplexing. Disturbing, even. Every so often, too, she’d catch Briar watching her sidelong with an enigmatic little smile she’d come to loathe.

She’d started to feel her technique was actually _worsening_ the longer she spent training with the other Fire Temple devotees. Two days before the mid-season holiday, she’d purposefully stayed away, diverting every ounce of her attention to the rush of projects bombarding the forge as everyone scrambled for pretty things for their dear ones. For an extra distraction, she set the final touches on a pet project she’d been hurrying along in secret for her teacher’s gift.

The theory had been sound. In practice, it failed miserably: halfway through the first morning, she caught herself hip-deep in wondering if it was possible to convey the wild flick at the end of Lina’s braid in the lines of the design Daja was sketching onto a bracelet.

On Midwinter morning Daja poked her head into the forge shed. Frostpine wasn’t there—exactly as she’d hoped. She’d just managed to scrape in the last polish of her gift before lights-out the night before. It would hardly be a surprise if he saw her putting it on the workbench.

She was turning to leave when Kirel’s big form blocked the door.

The Northman smiled at her. “Just the girl I was looking for. Well, actually, I was looking for Frostpine—but you’ve saved me a walk out to Discipline.” Grinning, he dug in a leather satchel.

He emerged with a small rectangular wooden box.

Daja approached with curiosity. She was now relieved she’d thought to pick up Kirel’s gift as well as Frostpine’s; she held out the small cloth bag to him and exchanged it for the mysterious box.

The box was plain wooden slats slotted and glued together half an inch or so apart. Only the top was solid; charred into the wood was an oval design of an orchard in a mountain valley. Wafting from the open sides was a delicious smell Daja thought was familiar, though she couldn’t place it.

Kirel’s gasp of surprise caught her attention. He had upended the bag into his hand and now held his gift to the light.

Months ago while walking in the markets after the pirate attack, Daja had stumbled across the pendant. It struck her as the perfect thing for a mountain boy missing home. Hung on the leather cord was a small polished disk of white-streaked black stone, cool as a chip of ice. Deeply carved into the centre was the outline of a mountain. To Daja it looked like nothing so much as Little Bear’s head when he threw it back to howl. The clever craftsman had fashioned it so the lines of quartz intimated an overcast sky and snow-capped foothills. The stall-minder – a white-haired northerner – had told Daja it was a landmark near his home. When she asked, he told her it was called Blacktooth Mountain.

“This is…”

“I stumbled onto it. The stall keeper said it was the only one of its kind he had. It seemed like too big a coincidence to happen by chance,” Daja said simply. “If I knew your gods better, I’d say you were meant to have it.”

She looked down at the open box in her hands. Small, dark fruits winked up at her in the forge’s half-light. Cherries! Somewhere, somehow, he had found a box of fresh cherries in winter.

“I remembered you liked them at the festival.”

“How did you—”

“I may have bribed Dedicate Gorse to store them away for me,” Kirel admitted self-consciously. He was fiddling with the amulet’s cord to get it over his neck without tangling in his long hair.

Daja grinned up at him. “I suppose you want me to share them with you.”

“Oh no,” Kirel said, holding up his hands. “They’re all yours. Happy Midwinter, Daja.” He grinned at her and ducked his head.

The light-hearted peck on her lips caught Daja completely by surprise. Her mind spun wildly. Kirel didn’t like her like _that_ —and she didn’t like Kirel like that.

But this _was_ sort of nice… On impulse, she pressed their closed mouths together more forcefully. Her lips fizzed pleasantly. There: she could put her mind at ease. It wasn't that she liked Lina in some special way--that she was _nisamohi._ She just liked the idea of kissing people. And if kissing Kirel wasn’t sparks and crashing thunder, it was only that Daja wasn't very good at it yet. The odd feelings around Lina were just a passing artistic fancy—a craftswoman’s romantic notion of a girl with a pretty smile and a shapely form, and hair like the spirit of fire. That was all.

It had absolutely nothing at all to do with the way Daja’s belly tightened up when Lina smiled at her, or the warmth that filled her fingers and toes.


	4. God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 52: God  
> Okay this one got syrupy and I apologise.

It was a cold grey morning gilded with frost when they happened upon one another at a crossing of the temple roads. The dawnstar still winked in the west, hung low like a diamond on a courtesan's neckline. Daja had been pushing a small wheelbarrow of coal from the stores to the forge when she encountered Lina on a stroll to offer dawn devotions to a shrine of Shurri Firesword. The carters took three days’ holiday around Longnight and they hadn’t gotten around to resupplying Frostpine’s forge yet; Daja didn't mind doing it. Her heavy quilted coat was saturated in Sandry’s magic to keep the heat in and the cold out, but as she stood talking to Lina the chill crept insidiously into her boots and up her legs. A plain oak quarterstaff – Lina's constant companion during SkyFire’s insistence that novices know their weapon like their own bodies – tapped rhythmically at Lina's leg.

It seemed to Daja that Lina’s light blue eyes sharpened as Daja shivered, but she might have imagined it. Lina took Daja’s lie about not feeling the cold without comment. She fell in beside the smith as they started back toward the forge, half-smiling with one hand in her own coat pocket. Daja shivered again as their arms brushed. The scent that had followed Lina into the forge that day – burning sage and woodsmoke – curled around them through the mist. It mingled pleasantly with the smell of hot iron and coaldust that hung around Daja.

Despite her distraction, Daja had the presence of mind to look surprised when Lina furtively presented her with a lump of pink-shot quartz. Daja almost dropped it. It was _warm_ —nearly hot.

"Don’t tell anyone," Lina whispered. A hopeful smile tucked up the corner of her pretty mouth, as if they shared a secret now.

Daja stored the image away for another cold day and allowed Lina to take the handles of the barrow from her. Cradled in her gloved hands the quartz pulsed with the heat of a small brazier.

Lina was watching her, one corner of her lip between her teeth. Daja pretended not to notice and tried to quell the tingling in her fingertips where their gloved hands had connected. The stone was a round cluster of pink prisms, the bottom gritty grey and slightly curved as if it had been part of some fantastic egg.

They weren’t supposed to be experimenting, Lina was saying, her words slightly strained with the weight of the cart. They were apprentices. Only just entering their second year of training. That put her at thirteen or so—like Daja.

"But it came so easily," Lina said. Late one night, she’d sat in the novices' workshop and pulled the heat of a small brazier into the quartz. The result sat in Daja’s hands.

Odd washes of warmth rippled through the Trader’s gloves; they went up her arms and neck (where a flush was already fighting to fill her cheeks with fire) and down her legs, chasing out the nipping chill. Lina’s eyes were full of tiny sparks as she watched Daja’s reaction—agate blue aglint with curiosity. She didn’t bother to shield it when Daja met her gaze, although red stirred up in her cheeks.

_Another magic rock_ , a little voice with Briar’s mocking tone tickled in Daja's ear, although she was sure the real Briar was nowhere in minds’ reach. She pushed it aside and smiled. The tingling in her fingers spread up her arms.

Later she would have no memory of the things they talked about on the way back to the forge. She was caught up on the fine, coppery hairs too short to be braided curling over Lina's collar. Laugh-lines wrinkling around Lina's nose when Daja related laying into three strapping apprentices her first week here with only her Trader staff. The solidity of Lina's arm bumping Daja's.

The tingle beneath Daja’s ribs trickled down into a fizzy sensation low in her belly. She felt lightheaded.

Lina mentioned the quarterstaff drills of the Fire Temple classes with mingled exhaustion and pleasure. They were the best distraction from all the disagreeable scholarly deskwork.

"Only... you haven’t been to training in a while." She was watching Daja shyly from the muffle of her scarf. "I missed you. I wondered what great magic project pulled you away."

Daja skimmed over the adventure she and her foster-siblings had had in the North. She took an unexpectedly intense pleasure in the growing wonderment in Lina’s eyes.

She didn’t mention the living brass or the fire squares. To her mind it would be too much like bragging. (The Briar voice piped up again, drawling that she had a reason to brag – how many people could work with living fire – but she hushed it.)

Lina smiled, braid swaying as she shook her head. "I've never had an adventure like that. Me and Davri – my sister – grew up in a herding community. Up in the mountains in the north. Though not so far north as your blond friend, I think?" 

Daja shrugged. She didn't know.

"Anyway, we came south when a travelling mage recognised us both as having nascent magic." Lina laughed. "Ama never could work out how her herb garden survived the winter so much better than everyone else in the village. She sent us a letter the year we left, asked the Temple to send Davri back so at least the turnips would grow."

It was the first time Daja had heard her make a joke. With Lina’s laughter, the sparks in her eyes intensified until they might have melted snow from the mountaintops. Frisson like molten gold flooded the rest of Daja’s limbs and set her body aglow.

"But anyway, the most magical thing we can do, really," Lina said ruefully, "is spin a staff lit at both ends so fast it looks like it's melting into a ring of liquid fire. The younger folks practice it for festivals and fetes. It's not much use, but it looks fair impressive at night."

"I'd like to see that," Daja said. She was surprised, as she spoke, by how much she meant it. They had reached the forge.

Lina smiled widely. "I'd like you to as well."

 Frostpine hadn’t returned from wherever he had spent the night and Daja hadn’t lit the fire before going for coal. Dark and deserted as it was, there was nothing to distract them from each other. Daja wasn’t sure who moved in first. Maybe they bumped into each other in the dark. Reaching for each other was as natural as opening their mouths to breathe and draw each other in. Lina’s mouth was sweeter than honey as they pressed up against each other. She tasted like cinnamon and sage and something sharp and rich that Daja couldn’t name. Daja held her closer and felt a fresh wave of heat race through herself, fingertips to toes. The calluses Daja had felt when they shook hands rasped against her neck. Goosebumps sprang up all down her back.

Tilting their heads the opposite direction was a little awkward, and they bumped noses in the middle, but their breathless chuckles were heady. Daja didn't ever want to stop.

There had to be a kind of reason in this, she thought half-absently as Lina’s hands scrabbled for purchase on her jacket. They found it: in half a moment Lina had the garment unfastened from hip to throat. Hands burrowed under Daja’s shirt.

Daja hissed when cold fingers made contact with the small of her back. _Gingko tea to improve circulation,_ recitated Briar's voice. Daja shoved it away and buried herself in Lina. _  
_

There _had_ to be some driving force behind this, she thought. Some kind of divine plan. This kind of thing never just _happened_ —especially not to _trangshi_ , even if they were redeemed. Lina pulled away just far enough that she could come in again and place softer, tiny kisses on Daja’s lips—once, twice, before she pulled Daja close again.

Finally Daja was able to satisfy the want that had plagued her since they shared a weary smile over a courtyard choked with death. Clasping her hand lightly on the back of Lina’s head, she ran it down the length of the braid until she found the leather tie that kept it bound. She pulled the tie free. They surfaced for air, foreheads touched together. When Daja opened her eyes Lina was watching her. She reddened at being caught watching but didn’t look away.

Nobody but the gods would think to throw together a Blue Trader who worked living metal and a mountain girl who poured fire into stones together.

Daja closed her eyes and pressed their foreheads together more firmly. With her eyes squeezed shut, she dimly heard laboured breathing. Lina started a new trail of light kisses, jawline to throat. The breathing caught.

Now Daja recognised it as her own. Lina’s hands slipped up from Daja's hips to the small of her back. The glyphs her fingers traced were meaningless but Daja felt herself slipping into a kind of trance. Blindly, she reached around and untwisted Lina’s braid. She opened her eyes to see liquid fire flowing over her hands, unbraiding as it spread.

Lina rested her head on Daja’s shoulder to watch Daja pick strands of copper from the whole. When Daja slipped her hand from the braid to Lina’s jaw, raising her face, she was smiling with a kind of fierce serenity. Sparks like a thousand dawnstars spiralled through her eyes. A building heat inside Daja mirrored them, spinning down into the depths of her body, pulling them closer, tempting with something decadent and foreign.

This time she opened Lina’s mouth to her own with teasing lick to the lower lip, and sought the origin of the honey-sweet.

The pleasant tingle in Daja's belly was a distant memory. All now was pressure and striking sparks, a roar of fire in her ears deafening her to all but _this_. Their sighs shushed in her ears like bellows as they laid out on their coats in the hay loft. The soft press of their chests mingled with a delirium of other sensations: metal and hay and sage in Daja’s nose, the hard point of Lina’s nipple in her palm, the prickle of stalks through their jackets, Lina’s tongue warm and stroking Daja’s own. Lina’s skin was soft and warm on Daja’s, her fingertips cool and hard on Daja’s hips. At points there were hands in the wrong place, pinching muscles and scrapes of teeth, but it all swirled into glorious chaos--imperfection grounding the surreality of it, driving Daja deeper into delirium. Each girl strove unconsciously to touch each other like they touched themselves.

Daja nuzzled into Lina's neck, and lower, seeking fuller, softer places. Lina drew Daja's leggings down her hips. Straw bent uncomfortable beneath the blanket.

Daja arched as two questing fingers found a nub at the apex of her thighs that sent waves of white heat through her. Lina lay half-beside her, half on top, their legs tangled together. Daja pulled herself back to the level of Lina’s breasts, straddling the thigh between her own, and took one pink nipple into her mouth. She was rewarded with a throaty moan from somewhere above; a louder one when she sucked hard.

The fingers between her legs slipped lower and dipped inside.

Daja lost track of where she ended and Lina began. The world slid out of focus. Like when she was drawing: it greyed out of importance. All was them—too hot, too loud, too fast. Melting together.

The roiling, chaotic centre of Daja’s delirium began to compress. Sparks came thicker and faster now. The leg between Daja’s bucked and Lina’s forehead against Daja’s was damp with sweat. Daja opened her eyes to see Lina’s screwed tightly closed, her mouth open as she panted. She let out a little whimper when Daja kissed her; slipped her tongue faster against Daja’s with complicit desperation.

Her fingers worked more quickly now, coaxing arches from Daja’s hips as Daja instinctually tried to keep up. Daja blindly sought for Lina’s centre. She found it slick and warm, clenching and flexing around her fingers as she strove to give Lina the same feelings she was giving Daja. Lina’s eyes popped open when Daja found her nub. She clutched reflexively at the back of Daja’s neck with a cry.

There were no gods designing the way Daja and Lina led up to this, Daja decided dazedly. Tension coiled down to a catch inside her. Lina’s fingertips circled her nub once, twice. Daja slipped her own fingers down inside Lina and curled them.

Lina gasped. Daja felt herself rise up like a hammer before the strike. For a fraction of a second everything teetered in balance.

The hammer fell. Daja pulled Lina’s hips tight to her own as Lina bucked. Fire raked Daja’s back; Lina threw herself fullbodied into the fall, and Daja threw her head back as pleasure-pain struck her like an anvil. Black and red flashed before her eyes together and a thousand tiny stars burst behind her eyelids.

There was nothing divine in the things that led them to this.

There was only divinity _in_ _this_ —this blinding expanse, this brilliant moment of fire and ecstasy.

And it was now – with sparks and stars all spiralling back to earth around them – that Daja saw the gods.


	5. Traveller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 32: Traveller
> 
> Post Will Of The Empress (which I haven't read in a while).

The road ahead draped another hilltop and curved out of sight like silk over a sleeping woman’s hip. This was wild stony country but the going was smooth enough to allow Daja’s mind to wander. Lulled by the motion of the horses, her thoughts ran back along their way to the palace of Namorn—and Rizu.

Behind her she could hear Briar chatting aimlessly with one of the caravan guards, and the rustle of Tris turning pages. Sandry’s lilac perfume floated back from the head of the column on the breeze. Stirred by the perfume, a memory of spice and frankincense ghosted by Daja’s nose. Quick on its heels came an involuntary shudder and a hot pricking in her eyes.

Daja touched the head of her staff (tucked into a loop of leather at the back of the saddle). The cool brass under her fingers soothed her. She traced the embossed monkeys until she’d steadied herself again. Again, she wished the wardrobe mistress had agreed to come with her, and her mind spun with a dozen more things Daja might have said to convince her. But behind the regret, Daja knew Rizu would never have come.

Daja felt, at once, heavy and hollow—like a forge bucket emptied and scraped clean. But after all the chaos – the poison of the Namornese court – part of her was glad it was over. She was clear and away and she wasn’t going back.

Still, she couldn’t shut out the quicksilver flashes of what it had been like to be loved by Rizu: the silky skin in the crease of her elbow and wrist, the tastes of cardamon/honey/cloves when their mouths met. The hard curve of her jaw. The soft one of her waist.

The last were especially vivid and a fresh wave of hot, strong loss struck Daja, nearly doubling her up in the saddle.

Turning her mind from them with an effort, she stumbled down a different path. Different memories—older, more faded, but the sensations as striking as the day they were made. Reaching into them, she grasped their hot core and _pulled_.

The smells of sage, sweatsalt, and hot metal filled her nose. Warmth bloomed in her fingertips. How could she have forgotten? A hundred weary smiles over the practice yard, quartz warm to the touch, and one misty day in the forge—all scored indelibly into her past like the symbols on her staff.

They’d been barely girls, all angles and teeth clacking and budding breasts. But something about it had set a fire inside Daja she’d never come close to matching—until Rizuka. The more she thought about it, the more auburn hair blended into brown, brown eyes into blue, all their touches and caresses together until Rizu/Lina sang out Daja’s name together.

The Trader exhaled in a rush.

It hadn’t lasted. Every piece of metal in the forge had sung out as if struck by Hakkoi’s hammer; the heat-stone smouldered blackly on the hay beside their entangled bodies. As soon as they had their breath back, both had known it would never happen again. For Daja, her Summersea sensibilities whispered that it was too much like baiting the Trickster—inviting more bad luck for the _trangshi_. She’d grown a lot in the north, but not enough to wholly shake the fear of loss. Pursuing something with Lina would be like playing with fire in her own house: Daja couldn’t be burned—but everything around her could.

A month later, Daja and Frostpine had left for the west. She’d caught a glimpse of Lina one day before she left. Just for a moment. The Fire Temple novice was walking arm in arm with her sister towards the Hub. As Daja cut across the ring road to Discipline, she thought Lina looked back at her, just for an instant. But she could have imagined it. When she blinked, the duo was already dwindling into the distance.

Daja remembered with aching clarity the pang she’d felt at leaving Winding Circle. At the time she’d thought it drew from leaving home, and family, and familiar—in spite of the excitement of new places, new magics, new metals. The sensation had been bitterly double-edged: sharp as a new blade, sweet as a cherry bursting on her tongue. But she understood it. Six years later – after everything she’d been through, after Namorn, Empress Berengarde, and Rizuka – Daja spared her first thought for the novice at Winding Circle, all those miles ago, and she understood it. So now for the first time in years, she wondered.

Tris’ sudden cry of outrage startled Daja from her thoughts. She turned in her saddle just in time to see Briar’s wicked retort as he tweaked a braid. Sandry turned as well, at the head of the short column. The little blonde scowled and immediately started to scold.

Daja hid a smile. Time might pass, sure enough, but in the end people had a way of finding their way back to each other.


	6. Fame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt 86: Fame
> 
> I'm so unhappy with this chapter; it didn't want to play along, and when it finally caved, it didn't play nicely. But at least it's out.

Years later, the gods tested Daja one last time. By that time she had her personal forge set up; steady business kept money and work flowing into the house (and food onto the table for when her foster siblings wandered in). She had her comfortable house and her comfortable life and a forge where even great mages asked politely before interfering.

And into the middle of it strolled one Initiate Sunstrike seeking a quotation for a living bronze statue of Shurri Firesword.

Daja considered remarking that the gods had plenty of life in them without putting magic into the mix, but that was Tris on her tongue and she bit it back. (Tris had been by yesterday for tea, sharp with her restlessness for cooler weather.) Daja chewed the remark into submission while she set down her tongs and turned to see the Winding Circle envoy who’d arranged by letter to come by with a sketch.

Familiarity with the face in the verge of daylight and shadow hit Daja like a fuller to the chest.

From Lina’s expression, Daja had a similar effect.

Lina visibly gathered herself, inclining her head. “Master Smith.” Her voice had mellowed in eight years. “I’d heard tales of a mighty smith-mage by the name of Kisubo-Idaram, but…” New sunwrinkles creased around her eyes with her wry smile. “I ought to have realised who the stories were about.”

Learning that Lina was an Initiate, Daja realised she’d heard tales too: Sunstrike was the name of a mage in the team sent by Duke Vedris to assist local mages in relief efforts for an area of Emelan’s west devastated by fires just before winter in 1041 KF. Niko, relating their workings to Tris, had commented on the ingenuity of a system developed by the team to draw the heat of the sun into quartz panels--providing the people with light and heat through the winter when wood was scarce. Sunstrike, Grapeseed, Copris, and Wattle had been the Winding Circle contributions to the delegation. From what Daja remembered, Copris and Sunstrike were the Fire Temple Initiates who’d put the spell system together.

“Initiate,” Daja said, “I’m proud of my work, but I’m no great mage.”

Lina’s eyebrow hiked in a manner so reminiscent of Skyfire Daja wondered whom she’d trained with. “There’s only one woman I ever met who handles naked flame like cloth.”

Now it was Daja’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “And only a few mages I’ve heard of controlled enough to safely pour great powers into stones.”

“That was my only contribution. Copris was the one who figured out how to enable them to emit heat without burning.”

“With you leaning over his shoulder, no doubt.”

“A joint effort,” said Lina, waving a hand. “Unlike your great exploits to the west, I’ve heard.”

Daja frowned. “I learnt far too much about the dangers of giving power to the well-intentioned. I wouldn’t call those ‘great’.”

Lina stilled to absorb the grimness of Daja’s tone. The cool steadiness she’d swept through the door with slipped and a glint of teeth showed where a corner of her lip sneaked between them. She touched the clasp of her satchel, seeking the embossed Winding Circle insignia. “It seems the longer we’re alive, the less success we have avoiding the darker side of human nature.”

Was she imagining the devastation after the fires, Daja wondered, as Daja herself saw the aftermath of Ben?

They were veering into dark territory as they lingered in the heat of the forge. Daja still hadn’t fully made peace with those shadows; from Lina’s face, she’d hadn’t either.

Daja cleared her throat. “Initiate—”

Lina winced.

“—I… understand First Dedicate Espino has sent along some concept designs for the shrine statue. Perhaps we could discuss them over tea.”

Lina smiled, though it was shaky. “Of course. Lead the way, Master Smith.”

Daja briskly sorted out the odds and ends that needed tending in the forge and led the way into the house. She did some quick belated calculation at the door: yes, her housemates were absent on their own errands and likely wouldn’t be back for some time. It seemed important that they had the house to themselves. Her spine prickled with the unaccustomed intimacy of a body close behind her as she led the way down the short, narrow corridor to the kitchen. It didn't seem right to seat the Initiate in the receiving room, where Daja usually conducted business, and leave her there while Daja mucked about in the kitchen making tea. Or was it perhaps that Daja worried she might lose her nerve if she had a moment alone to truly grasp the situation? 

Catching that thought, she chided herself for it. She was a professional now. A grown woman. Not some child who—

She turned back to ask what type of tea Lina wanted and found her a handspan away.

Lina rocked back at the same moment Daja did. She’d been looking at the brightly coloured labels Briar put on the sundry boxes above the coldbox, and hadn’t realised Daja had stopped walking.

She blushed the same way she had as a child, Daja was gratified to note: hot red from the neck up. Daja’s mind supplied a vision of a full-body flush as Lina teetered at the edge of release, pink against the white of her novice robe on the hay—

Heat in her own cheeks, Daja inclined her head to the shelf and listed the teas Tris kept there. She paused when Lina nodded to fruit peel and mint, then turned stiltedly to fetch the box.

A grown woman indeed.

For a moment the kitchen was quiet except for the scrape of the metal kettle lid.

Daja gestured to a chair. “Please sit.”

What next? This felt more social than a bargaining meeting. Sandry would make smalltalk.

“Your sister’s well?” Daja asked.

“Thriving. She’s an Initiate herself. She goes by Cottonwood now. You may see her around--she's heavily involved in the Duke's initiative to put public herb gardens next to the markets. If I stop her talking about importing lemongrass seeds and exotic onions to discourage aphids, she _will_ go on about collecting organic compost from the inns and guesthouses." She paused to chuckle and seemed to relax when Daja did also. "And yourself…" how are you finding life back in Summersea?”

“It’s… comfortable. As you say, the stories spread. Seems I get more folk wanting to gawk at the brasshanded mage than pay her for work, but a good number do bring coin.” Daja was uncomfortably aware of the drape of Lina’s robe; the curve of her neck as she peered at a thread of vine cheekily creeping in the kitchen window. There was a dark smudge behind her ear like a thumbprint.

“In the report I heard,” Daja said lightly, “you and Copris worked very closely.”

Lina tilted her head away from the vine to Daja. When she spoke, it was slowly: “He’s a very sharp-minded fellow. We communicate very well. But… Winding Circle frowns on relationships between devotees. And—” She peered up at Daja. “—my tastes have never run that way.”

Daja busied herself with the kitchen fire, coaxing it to life. “Not everything changes like the winds, then, Initiate Sunstrike?”

At the corner of Daja’s eye, Lina made a face again: a flicker of the girl with dirt under her nails. “Please call me Lina.”

“Don’t Initiates discard their former names?”

“‘Initiate’ sounds so strange coming from you.”

Daja had no response for that. She carried the kettle to the hearth and nudged some coals into a better position. She didn’t jump when an arm reached past her. Lina laid her hand on the kettle, which sputtered indignantly and then began the steady jostle that indicated boiling inside. Daja looked back over her shoulder.

“And you,” Lina murmured. “Did you grow out of the taste for women?”

Between the folds of Lina’s robe, a brass amulet winked at Daja. She was silent, her mind turning rapidly ahead of her, thinking of circles and gods and the forces that drove elements together deep underground. Her silence sent the wrong message to Lina.

The other woman flushed. “I’ve been too forward,” she said, pulling back. “I’m sorry. I—”

Daja touched Lina’s arm as it retracted, stopping it. “You haven’t. Only… the last woman to show interest…”

Lina’s smile was slightly forced as she very deliberately withdrew her arm and broke contact. “I should have asked. Again, Master Smith: my apologies.”

Daja sighed and turned to lift the kettle from the fire barehanded. “Maybe I should tell you a little about that woman. If you have time.”

Lina sat down at the table. “If you like," she said, spreading her hands, "I have all afternoon.”

 

Daja intended, at some point, to suggest they take a stroll in the garden to stretch their legs. They never quite made it there.

Vague, gestural remarks on Rizu became commentary on Namorn in general, and then the things she’d seen there. That flowed to the things Lina had seen at the Universities she’d visited for Winding Circle, and then advancements in the workings of magic from all over, which led back to the ways those advances interacted with physical paraphernalia.

Talking grew easier. The tension left Daja’s shoulders. Aside from requesting clarification of Daja’s vague references to Rizu, Lina never inquired about Daja’s past lovers.

This time it was Daja who moved closer. The scent that filled her nose was the same as years ago: woodsmoke, incense, and burning sage. But now there were other hints—reminders of a life lived without Daja: geranium oil, cinnamon. The green smells of warm earth and lemongrass from Davri— _Cottonwood_ were still there; those smells grounded Daja. Gave her something to hold onto that wasn’t hot metal and hair red in the afternoon sun like sparks flying before the bellows.

That grounding was important. With Lina’s hands on Daja’s waist - her travel-hardened body pressed to Daja’s - it would have been all too easy for them to melt together. To lose their edges again.

Their mouths moved more easily together than before. Molten, whispered the romantic part of Daja that Rizu had awakened. Meant to be, like copper and tin. More beautiful together than apart.

Tingling crept up through Daja’s body, starting in her fingertips and toes. It fizzed in her lips, her cheeks, her nipples—stronger where Lina touched her.

When Lina leant back far enough to catch her breath, the sunwrinkles creased around her eyes. When Daja had last seen that expression, Lina had been glancing back as she walked away arm-in-arm with her sister, barefoot with her quarterstaff over her shoulder on the road back to the Fire Temple. Leaving. Leaving Daja on the spiral road from Discipline, leaving Daja's life. Once again, Daja was struck by the notion of elemental forces and the natural rhythms of life.

She tilted her mouth to Lina’s as the Initiate ducked in for a more chaste kiss.

“Shall I," Lina murmured, "tell Espino we can begin negotiation for the pieces tomorrow?”

“I don’t give two copper cresses what you tell Espino,” Daja said, aware of her foster brother’s words in her mouth.

Hard on the heels of that came a tiny flutter of amusement: the man himself approaching the range of their magical connection. Very deliberately, Daja closed the door on him and got to her feet.

“If you don’t want more tea,” she said, “maybe we should continue this discussion elsewhere. We’re about to have an audience who’ll be far more appreciative of seeing the show than we will to be giving it.”


	7. Adore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out fluffy and then got kind of sad and I'm SORRY

Daja adored the freckles like constellations across Lina’s shoulders. She liked the dips in the small of Lina’s back, and Lina’s quickness with a staff; Lina could almost knock Daja down if the Trader didn’t stay alert.

Lina said she loved the intensity of Daja’s eyes when she worked a new project, and the smell of her clothes after a day in the forge—smoke and warding oils and duck manure in the quenching bucket.

“Don’t wrinkle your nose up,” Daja chided the first time Lina watched her tip droppings into the water. “It makes the metal harder.”

Lina retreated with scrunched nose. A duck appeared among Tris’ chickens two days later. Tris, still as wary of animals she didn’t choose herself as she was of humans, declared it an evil little viper. It took Daja a week of bluntly telling both to grow up and smooth over their disagreement like the adult mages they were before Lina apologised for taking liberties with Tris’ home and Tris apologised for electrifying the privy door handle.

The public gardens went in next to the markets. Some days Daja saw Cottonwood there during errands for the forge. Occasionally they exchanged words. She seemed older, like Lina. But sadder too. Seeing the way she glanced north every so often, Daja wondered for the first time what Davri gave up to become Cottonwood. The temple life was not for everyone.

Lina came to Daja in the middle of the afternoon and had her up on the workbench under the garden window (the cleaner of the two benches). Daja didn't even complain that her apron was haphazardly thrown to the dirt floor: Lina's fingers were deft inside her and she tasted like the mintwater Cottonwood always produced from a coldbox when Daja stopped to exchange words.

Briar clapped a hand over his eyes in the garden and told them to warn him next time. Lina just laughed and went to her knees.

...

Daja learned that she liked to watch Lina peeling fruit by the kitchen window with her mind a hundred leagues beyond it (on the intricacies of some new mechano-magical project; the weather forecast for the week). Lina and Tris talked, in their truces, about lightning.

Daja's love of watching the tip of a knife slip through peach skin came a close second to lying on the bed watching the slip of Lina’s habit dropping to the floor. (The tips of her nipples catching thin cotton, the shudder that went through her. The lithe directness with which she crossed the room to Daja.) If Lina knew about that, she'd say it was easily outdone by the fleeting moments when Daja teetered on the edge of ecstasy—the press of white teeth on red lips, the lines of muscle in her neck taut beneath the skin.

War broke out on the northern borders.

Lina stayed the night.

...

Lina loved the sleepy curve of Daja’s lips. She said it so often Daja believed her. She propped chin on hands at the spark of dawn to watch Daja slowly come awake.

The first morning Lina slept beside her, Daja startled out of bed reaching for her staff--still tangled in a nightmare of wild fire and burning and bands of metal that would not heed her holding her back from helping the people who burned. Too late she realised the ‘bands’ had been the limbs of a sleeping Lina; and the ‘people’, Lina speaking her native Lairan in her sleep. Lina very sensibly drew away from the brass end of the staff a handspan from her nose and sat at the end of the bed until Daja returned to herself.

Daja apologised, but Lina said—

They moved about very quietly that day. Some days later they sat in the back garden just as quietly and fed the fowl while they spoke of nightmares, a fire in a Kugisko bathhouse, and villages burned to ash in the border-zones of Lairan and Namorn. Cottonwood had gone north, Lina said, and she would not be coming back.

Lina didn’t spend the night for some time.

...

Daja didn't write her, although she thought about it. She didn't mention to Tris why Daja started taking walks in the hills instead of the markets. Didn't acknowledge Briar when he nodded towards Winding Circle.

Rhythms, circles. Their time was over once again.

She heard, offhandedly, that Lina went away on a crisis mission for Winding Circle. Sometime after that, a summons came and Daja took a ship to Nidra Island to attend a hearing of the Trader Council.

When she returned Lina was sitting on her doorstep swapping smalltalk with Briar. She'd brought Daja a coin from Ros Antra; it has a fish on one face, a woman under a date palm on the other. Brodnike, her name was, according to Lina; a wanderer who found an oasis rich in dates and greenery and founded a nation there. The metal was foreign. _Electrum_ , they called it. She'd got it from the body of a dead mercenary on the borders of Namorn.

This time, she asked if she could kiss Daja.

She didn’t leave for some time.

...

Daja didn't talk in her sleep. If she met ghosts in her dreams, she bid them safe journeying and passed by without comment. The most familiar of them sat down to tea with her without bothering with spoken formalities.

Lina talked, but Daja didn't speak Lairan. Two words, though, seemed familiar. _Keldi_ , as far as Daja knew, was _sister_. The other, _heoradh_ , meant _god._

...

“Didn’t you take orders, Initiate?” Daja asked muzzily one morning, examining a lock of Lina’s hair in the dawn light creeping through the window. The red was duller than the morning they'd met, though in the light it shone as brightly. “When did you last attend worship at the Temple?”

“Dedicate,” Lina corrected, face down in the second pillow. Her sleepy voice was muffled but her sigh at the stroke of callused fingers as Daja laid the curl carefully down in the dip between Lina’s shoulder blades was eloquent. “Being with you is meditative. And I find—“ She arched into Daja’s touch. “—that if our gods do not find what we did last night worshipful, they are the wrong ones to venerate.”

“You blaspheme.”

“I speak the truth.”

Daja flattened her hand on Lina’s back. Her tone was sombre: “Be wary. The gods who would be amused by that are not the ones to whom we dedicate our lives.”

Lina shifted under Daja’s hand, drawing her own hand free from under the pillow to rest beside her head. “I know.” Her voice was low. “And yet I can’t bring myself to call it untrue.”

They lay in silence for some time. Outside, the sharp quacking of the duck mingled with a chorus of offended clucks as Little Bear chased the hens out into the yard. Wood scuffed outside Daja’s door – Tris making her way downstairs to put on water for tea – at the same time as a tinge of green stirred at the edge of Daja’s mind: Briar returning from the night’s wanderings.

Lina’s back was sunburnt under Daja’s hand and a scattering more freckles than three years before made shapes like constellations, or ash on the wind.

Daja replaced her hand with her mouth briefly and then got up.

…

They didn’t last. Not as a couple—Brasshand and Sunstrike, wives in war. Daja knew, in some small corner of herself, that they never would have. (A temple mage and an itinerant commercial mage? No.) They moved into each other’s lives, then they moved out again. But for the while they walked the same path, the sweet moments were enough.

And there was always, they consoled themselves, the quiet sigh of relief when they met again; the slump of shoulders as an unknown weight fell away, just for a little while. Lina on the doorstep swapping quarters of apple with Briar, snatches of lightning with Tris; Daja at the temple, visiting her old mentors by circuitous routes, running errands on which she wouldn’t turn down company.

More than the rest, they liked the simple moments at the end of the day. Perching on the roof of the house or – on dreamy days – walking the shore beyond the harbour, they never quite touched but never drifted apart. They had melted together at the edges.

Lina saw it happening, and felt them melting in the warmth of companionship to flow into the join like liquid. Maybe she saw it coming from the doorway of Daja’s workshop.

Daja felt it happening and wondered at the ways of a world that would bring them together and remake them this way. If she looked back, she knew she saw it coming from the temple courtyard.

FIN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want them to be together, but I started this a long time ago, and in the intervening time I got sad and I don't think they fit so well as lifemates anymore. If it makes things better, I headcanon Daja finds another lady-smith in Summersea and they have beautiful metalworking babies.


End file.
